John Candy wears a Casio A159W

The entire class dynamic of Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) can be read on two wrists. Steve Martin's Neal Page wears an expensive dress watch. John Candy's Del Griffith wears a Casio A159W — a $15 silver-toned digital that has been in production since the late 1970s and is one of the cheapest watches Casio makes. John Hughes directed, and the film follows an advertising executive and a shower curtain ring salesman forced to travel together across the Midwest after a cancelled flight ruins their Thanksgiving plans.

The A159W on Del Griffith is doing the work of an entire backstory in a single prop. Del sells novelty shower curtain rings out of a sample case. He can't afford a hotel room most nights. He wears a $15 Casio because that's what a man in his economic bracket wears, and he doesn't think about it any more than he thinks about his coat or his trunk.